back when I used to make vgm arrangement vids on youtube, sometimes I'd notice my audio recordings had little cracks and pops and other imperfections. it was probably a consequence of moving my recording equipment to and from that church building so often, but it really bothered me since I wasn't able to check the quality of the recordings until I got home. at some point (I think it was around the time of my Gerudo Valley improvisation), I thought it'd be a cool idea to turn these glitches into a gimmick. start trying to seek them out intentionally, and build some sort of ARG out of it. like the hardware malfunctions were caused by some sort of evil being and subtly, slowly, a story would start emerging from what would mostly be normal music uploads. it seemed like a unique idea at the time and honestly still seems interesting now β has there ever been a music channel that has done anything like this before? as far as I can tell, it seems like all the ARG youtube channels have the intention of being an ARG from the outset, and whatever pretense they build around the ARG is secondary. they always seem to be in a rush to get to the ARG. it's hard to believe they were ever supposed to be anything else. the concept of an organic growth and devolution of an honest-to-goodness youtube channel like this is still exciting to me. it feels more honest and genuine than the youtube channels where the point of the channel's existence has been the ARG from the start. starting a perfectly standard channel and taking advantage of the strange occurrences that were afflicting my videos completely naturally... isn't there an inimitable authenticity to that? doesn't the reality of the situation lend to its credibility, wouldn't it be chilling? I never wound up doing that since I couldn't quite figure out a story interesting enough that would be worthy of such a drastic shift in my focus (read: anything that wasn't obviously derivative of other ARG channels). though thinking about it now, the church I recorded at probably wouldn't have liked it if they found out I was implying there was an evil presence in their building, lol
- they/them
music composer, writer, game designer and freakshow forever
in reply to @funbil's post:
on the one hand i would eat this shit up for breakfast lunch and dinner, on the other hand the main caveat i can think of with doing that would be that anyone who subscribed for legit music might be left scratching their heads
if someone were to try this on a new channel maybe they could do vgm covers from games like oneshot or undertale that break the 4th wall to attract a more arg-adjacent crowd lol
i was worried about that too. the plan would have been to stay mostly a regular music channel with the ARG stuff happening irregularly, which also probably would have helped with views since nobody would know when something "interesting" might happen. but you're right that, for the sake of the narrative, at some point the ARG would wind up taking priority over the music β even if it went back to normal after. at which point neither demographic would be pleased: the music watchers would leave once the music started phasing out, and the ARG watchers would leave after the story ended. it would have needed to be a vision i really believed in to commit to something like that.